 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to From the Desk. Today's episode, episode nine I think it is, is about cannibalism. A technique that is near and dear to my heart. It is something that I have done since the beginning of my career. Ever since I was a little kid, banging out words on a brother typewriter, an electronic typewriter. One of the main reasons I started doing it is because I do get so attached to the words that I write. Sometimes I'll write something that is really, really good, but is not good in context. And that's what I mean by cannibalism. If you guys haven't figured out yet, I'm talking about the use of old material in newer works or cannibalizing one piece of work or one story to fit in somewhere else. You're just basically just repurposing things. And of course I'm not talking about actually eating human beings. But the point of cannibalizing is to help you move past killing your darlings. What I mean by killing your darlings is when you write something that is just fantastic that you cannot see yourself ever deleting it. There is no purpose in your mind to delete this, but you send it off to somebody and somebody says, hey look, this is probably not the best thing to put in this book. It does not fit contextually. That's going to happen quite often. I think Neil Gaiman said when people tell you that something is wrong, they're usually right, but when somebody tells you how to fix something, they're usually always wrong. And the reason for that is it's your story. They can tell you what is broken, but you really need to know how to fix it yourself. And usually sometimes fixing those things means killing your darlings, which is taking that beautiful section of prose, that piece of writing that you just cannot live without and getting rid of it. Now I don't delete anything, even in the digital age, now that I'm working on computers and tablets and phones and all that stuff. Even back in the day, I would literally cut out the section that I wanted to keep and I would take that and I would put it into a file folder. My cannibal folder is literally called cannibal. And I had clippings, but by the end of it, the clipping, the folder was about this big. That's no joke. And nowadays what I do is I have a cannibal folder in my computer. When I write something that is awesome that I think is great and nobody else likes, I will cut it from the piece and I will hopefully find a place to use it later. Now the reason these things happen, I feel, is especially if you're a pancer and you're not a plotter, when you get into something, you will have an idea or a really good piece of thematic quality that you want to say, whether it be author intrusion or whatever it be, that you want to get out, that you put in there and it doesn't fit the piece. Most recently I can think of a part of The Bedding of Boys, my newest novel throughout August 18th, 2018. Shameless plug, sorry. In that one, there was a part that I really, really loved and everybody who read it said, no, we can see you all over this. This is nothing but author intrusion, you need to get rid of it. And I got rid of it, but I'm saving hopefully for another project where it won't be as jarring of a change of pace because there was no segue. And had I been maybe a better author, I could have segwayed better into it and had it seamless, but I didn't really have it. It was something I wanted to say and I said it, I just am not going to publish it. So that's sitting off in the side. So kill your darlings and say everything which brings me to the third reason why you should write this stuff to begin with, why you should write everything that you think of when you think of it is because all of this stuff is practice until you hit publish. And if you're a fan of the show, if you've been watching it since episode one, this is something that I have reiterated over and over. I've repeated over and over is this is all practice until you hit publish. And I want to drive that home to you because it is it is the truth. It is the it is the biggest fact you will come across when doing this when you when doing this writing job is it is all practice until you hit publish with me. And it's something that I got from way back in when I played with bands when I play I played guitar and bands I sang with bands. It was the things that I would I would tell everybody is like, look guys, it doesn't have to be perfect. This is all practice until we get up there on stage. And of course, you would get hit with I had a drummer one time say, yeah, but if we practice shittily, then getting out there on stage is going to be shitty also. Well, those are two for two different things, you know, there is never ever live sessions of writing. Okay. But whereas I would I finally changed it because it's more like the studio. If you're if you're talking about music, it is all practice until you get into the studio. And then only when you're in the studio does it have to be perfect. And sometimes people go to shows just to see what kind of either errors or mistakes or whatever that people make or how they will riff off and jam out on so live play isn't a good analogy for that. More like it's all practice until you hit the studio. And then even in the studio, it doesn't have to be perfect. You can all you have to do is get one perfect take and then you can overlay that stuff. Luckily for a writer, you don't ever have to worry about live at all. So you only have to get it right one time. Now, further, furthermore, it's all practice until you hit publish. Even if you do allow people to read your work beforehand, like beta reading or editors or whatever, just because those people have an idea of what the book is does not mean that that's the final aspect. That's the that's the final build of the book and you need to make people aware of that if they're going to be beta reading for you. And editors know it's not the final build of the book. They're trying to help you get to the final build of the book. But again, don't worry about embarrassing yourself until you actually go to publish everything up until the point when you hit publish or you send it off to the publisher and the publisher publishes it. All of all that is practice. So get that in your head that all of this is practice until you hit publish that way that you can get rid of things and you can kill your darlings. It hopefully that makes you feel better when you get in there and go, oh man, I really love this part, but nobody likes it. And that goes the same for not just really good writing, but just and that's it's a big thing. Just because you wrote it well does not mean it should fit. Get that out of your head also. Just because you wrote something that is epic does not mean it fits in that piece and it doesn't mean that you will ever be able to use it. In fact, some of the time I take like stuff that I have deleted for author intrusion and I'll go put it up on Twitter as like, you know, an internal monologue kind of thing. Just, you know, people like that kind of stuff, you know, the posts, the insights from their favorite author or whatever or people that they follow. But with writing, the only thing that matters is what the end customer buys and reads. That's the only thing that matters. Getting to that point is all that matters. But again, not everything you write is going to be publishable. Not everything you write is going to be worthy of that customer's money. So you have to learn what you have to learn to let go is basically what I'm saying. But just because you let go of that project, just because that idea failed does not mean that all of the ideas in that project. Were a failure and that's where cannibalism comes comes into play. You can go in and you can sustain other projects with older projects. It's one of my favorite parts of the process is going in and going, okay, that doesn't fit, but I might be able to put it somewhere. And when you use something from like 10 years ago in something that you are just now that something that you're writing now and it works and it fits everything. It's almost like magic. It's one of my favorite things to go back and go, okay, well, let's go through either I'm stuck on a project or something, not writer's block. I'm just stuck on a project and I don't know where to go with that project. Sometimes I will just go through my cannibal file either way. Sometimes I go back through the paper file that was this big. It's not that big anymore because I've used a lot of the stuff that's in there. But recently I would say before the bedding of boys. There was another book I'm work that I was working on that you guys don't know anything about. That wasn't part of the base end series, but I wrote it in between working on the sound of broken ribs and the final sound of the final copy of sound broken ribs and the final of the bedding of boys. I wrote a novel in between there. I also wrote slasher live, which something will happen with that eventually, but I wrote that before the bedding, not the bedding, before the sound of broken ribs. And I was able to use something from 10 years ago in that novel that I'm not going to tell you the name of. I can't tell you the name of it because if I tell you the name of it, at this point, I might get in trouble because I think I have a home for it. Oh, I know I have a home for it, but the ink's not dry yet on the contract and it's also in one of my other pin names. So I can't talk about it at all. But my point is something from 10 years ago, I was able to use recently. And it was such a great feeling to know that I still had that material and I had to do some heavy editing because I'm a much better writer now than I was back then. Every year, well shoot every couple months, you should get better, I think. Or else, what are you doing? You're just pulling Dean Coons and you're just writing the same book over and over again. But to go back over to recap the important points here. Don't be afraid to kill your darlings and hopefully the idea of cannibalism in writing will help you do that. So you're not actually killing them as much as you're storing them for later, I guess. If we're talking cannibalism, here's where you freeze the bodies and keep them off on the side until you need them, until you're hungry again. Save everything you do, no matter how bad you think it is, you need to save it. And then it's all practiced until you hit publish. Really, that's the thing I need to hammer home to you guys the most. If you're going to be doing this writing career, none of this stuff is final until publication. You can fix any of it, you can change any of it, but don't get attached to any one thing. Let that thing naturally evolve, let whatever you have decided to cut from something else, let that try and fit in where it can. So I guess that's everything. If you have any questions, anything really, just leave them down there. I try to get back in touch with everybody who comments, unless you're just rude and then I just ignore you. So leave your comments, questions, anything like that down in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have an E, you have an U, this has been from the desk. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!